Neko Case: Thrice All American

photo: Erica Henderson

Interview by Michaelangelo Matos

Born in Alexandria, Virginia and raised mainly in Tacoma,
Washington, Neko Case left home at 15 and began playing drums in punk rock
bands at 18. Around the time she began attending the Emily Carr Institute
of Art and Design in Vancouver (she graduated with a BFA in 1998), Case
began singing country music. Her debut, 1997's The Virginian, attracted
immediate notice, and three years later she appeared on not one but three
albums: her own Furnace Room Lullaby, which featured her semi-theme
song, "Thrice All American," a tribute to Tacoma ("I wanna tell you about
my hometown/It's a dusty old jewel in the south Puget Sound"); the Corn
Sisters' The Other Women, a mostly-covers album of duets with sharp-witted
Vancouver singer-songwriter Carolyn Mark; and the insanely catchy Mass
Romantic, by Vancouver sextet the New Pornographers, with whom Case
is a featured vocalist.

With the new Blacklisted, Case enters a new
phase of solo work. Though the album is twangy enough to file under alt-country,
it's also got a ghostly, noirish atmosphere that brings to mind
a more down-home k.d. lang or an updated, David Lynch-ian Patsy Cline.

I met Case the day after she performed an industry
showcase at the intimate Manhattan lounge, Joe's Pub. Some of the quotes
below appear in a Time Out New York article I wrote for the release
of Blacklisted, but the most interesting parts were the ones that
didn't fit the dictates of a celebrity profile, particularly one written
on short notice. As we began, she had just finished giving her bandmates
directions to Castle Clinton, where she was to play a show that evening
with Laura Cantrell.

NEKO CASE: I don't know New York that well, but I
know this area really well because we've been lost here for the last couple
days.

PSF: Has it felt kind of weird being in the
area during the reconstruction of the World Trade Center?

CASE: No, because people aren't acting weird.
I hope it doesn't sound rude to say this, but I don't think New Yorkers
have ever been more engaging or more friendly---ever. I don't mean that
it would affect them like, "We'd better be nice," but I mean, when I was
here to play at the Knitting Factory and nobody was allowed to go down
certain streets at that point. And I just remember the policemen and the
National Guard were so jolly. They made us sing to them and stuff. It was
really quite fun. Everybody was in really good spirits---I don't mean they
were in really good spirits because... it's hard to say it without sounding
like a dick, but I think that they realized that they lived beautiful lives
in a beautiful place, and they kind of enjoyed that. I've never had a stereotypical
New York experience, where people are really fucking rude to you. I've
never been robbed. Everywhere you go, there's someone who owns a convenience
store who's grumpy or a taxi driver who swears. But you know, it's not
that different.

PSF: I moved here from Seattle myself a year
and a half ago, right around the time you left. Did you live in Seattle
proper or Tacoma?

CASE: I lived in Tacoma a lot of my life, but the
last place I lived in Washington was Seattle proper.

PSF: Were you born there?

CASE: No, I was born in Virigina---my dad was in
the air force. I moved to Chicago from Seattle in October '99.

PSF: How would you characterize the difference between
those two cities?

CASE: Chicago is a lot friendlier, especially toward
its artists. Seattle is very unfriendly toward artists. There's no artists'
housing---they really like to use the arts community, but they don't like
to put anything back into the arts community. I'm talking about the government
and stuff like that, not the audiences who enjoy art. I would never want
to insult those people, because Seattle actually has one of the best art-appreciating
audiences in the whole country, especially people who go see shows. There's
a lot of great clubs there, and people are very enthusiastic to go out
and see music. I play there as much as possible.

PSF: There was a four-year gap between your first
and second albums, and since then there's been something of an avalanche
of stuff from various projects you've worked on. Is that stuff you had
been working on already and it just happened to come out together?

CASE: Yeah. It was weird how the Corn Sisters and
the [New] Pornographers and my record [2000's Furnace Room Lullaby]
all came out at the same time, because we'd been working on those projects
three years prior. People would probably make the mistake that I'm super-prolific,
but I'd just been working on them for a long time.

PSF: You don't consider yourself a prolific songwriter?

CASE: I'm not super-slow, but I'm not super-prolific,
either. Especially with the Pornographers, it's a lot easier, because I
don't actually write the songs. [mock-announcer's voice] "There are a team
of songwriters working around the clock in my absence!" They do all the
songwriting, Dan [Bejar] and Carl [Newman], and then I come in and sing,
which is a nice holiday for me. The Corn Sisters, we do a lot of old songs,
a lot of covers, we do some songs we've written, some songs Carolyn has
written herself. That's a very low-pressure band. We just played, of all
places, Dawson City, Yukon, last weekend. Very exciting---I'd never been
to the Yukon before. It's like a beautiful nature preserve. There's only
30,000 people in the entire territory, which means that everybody in the
town can go to Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto and watch a hockey game. Everybody
there is totally amazing: most people have three different jobs and a PhD.
We met this amazing lady named Glenda early in the day; she was in her
park-ranger outfit. Later, we saw her dressed like a turn-of-the-century
madam, leading a tour. And then later on, she was selling merch at the
music festival booth, just because she's such an enthusiast.

Everybody there is like that. They're amazing
people. I was there for two days; I'm going back there as soon as I possibly
can. I think I might play a bit because that'll pay for you to get in and
out, but I'll probably stay a few extra days just because it's so magical
there. Dawson City has a world-class art gallery, the Odd Gallery, there
was an amazing project running while I was there that was all about the
Northern Lights, and all the ways people thought the Northern Lights were
made, just all these crazy gadgets that were projecting light into the
sky. It's called the Odd Gallery because it's in the middle of the Oddfellows
Hall there. Upstairs, they have this beautiful concert hall where they
put on concerts. All the buildings are old; they don't tear down any of
the buildings that are rotting. They just reinforce them, because they
want people to see what buildings built during the gold rush look like.
All the buildings eventually slant, kind of Tim Burton-y looking, because
there's permafrost, which means the ground shifts all the time. During
the time I was there the sun never went down because it's so far north---it
just sort of ping-pongs back and forth across the horizon. There's no timber
industry there, either, because the trees are too short. So there's hundreds
of miles of virgin timber, and it looks fucking incredible. Dawson City
is right where the Yukon River and the Klondike River come together, and
the Klondike is clear and the Yukon is milky, so when you see them come
together there's these ribbons of milky and clear water. It's the most
incredible thing I've ever seen.

I played the Dawson City Music Festival. They only
sell 1,000 tickets so the town doesn't get too crowded. The town is only
12 by eight blocks. Only 700 people live there. But at one time it was
the third-largest city on the west coast; I think it had 3,000-some people.
It was third after Seattle. People used up the gold and went onto Gnome,
where I believe the next gold rush was.

PSF: You were talking about the preservation of the
buildings; that's a major concern of yours, isn't it?

CASE: Yeah, I'm pretty heavily into architecture
and what it does, its function, what it means for people's memories. There's
a lot of things about its craftsmanship that are really important. Things
are so stamped-out these days; you don't see stonemasons making beautiful
archways, some kind of Irish vine design going down the side of them. It's
nice to see those things stay. Plus, I think architecture holds a lot of
memories and electricity that replays all the time.

PSF: Is being in New York alienating for you on that
level?

CASE: It seems like maybe New York has a better chance
of keeping stuff. Basically, it just seems like, by sheer numbers, New
York has historical buildings everywhere. Hopefully people will slow down,
especially because they're so well made. Vancouver's the worst for that---there's
no old buildings left, it's all weird old glass and drywall and duct-tape
buildings. But it has a reputation for being a beautiful city. I think
it's the mountains that make it a beautiful city.

PSF: I saw you last night at Joe's Pub. I had liked
the record before, but the show made me like the record more, because it
makes the songs jump out more. If you don't mind my saying so, there was
something Twin Peaks-ish about seeing you in a black pinstriped
suit, singing "I'll Be Around."

CASE: I wanted to wear the suit because we were playing
a fancy bar, and I'd never worn it before. I thought, "Well, this is supposed
to be a showcase, maybe I should dress up." But I didn't really want to
wear a dress, so I wore the suit. I guess I felt a little Twin Peaks-ish
doing it, too. Dressing up, I just feel that way anyway. I'm kind of a
little boy—kind of dirty, barefoot.

PSF: Where did you hear the song first? It's an amazing
song.

CASE: My friend Andrew Berg was a fan of Ketty Lester,
she had a hit with that song "Love Letters" a long time ago, and he had
a best-of on CD. He made me a tape of it because he wanted me to hear "Love
Letters." I would listen to the whole thing, and the music was really great---the
orchestrations are really creepy and Christmassy in that Platters kind
of way, and I totally got hooked on "I'll Be Around." It was covered by
a lot of people back in the day, but nobody's covered it in a long time,
so I thought now's the time.

PSF: Last night your show was about a 70-30 split
between originals and covers. You seem like someone who hunts for songs.

CASE: I don't hunt, necessarily, but something will
strike me and make me want to do it---it'll just seem like a fun thing
to do. And those songs aren't meant to die. It's weird, people get strange
about whether you've written your own songs, which seems really stupid
considering that especially in country music, it's about oral tradition
and passing things on, and the songs weren't meant to be played by one
person and then forgotten.

PSF: How did you come to write "Lady Pilot"?

CASE: I was getting on a plane going to Tuscon, Arizona,
to do some recording. I was really happy, and I thought, "My life is so
good, this is gonna be the part when the plane crashes." [laughs] I was
feeling ultra-superstitious. And then I got on the plane, and the pilot
was a woman, and she was wearing a skirt, she had red hair, and she was
foxy. And I thought, "Oh, cool, I've got a lady pilot. I'm not gonna die!"

PSF: How about "Deep Red Bells"?

CASE: That has a lot to do with growing up in Washington
state during the time when the Green River Killer was active, when I was
in junior high. It's frightening. It has a lot to do with when you're a
kid and you see that stuff on TV all the time---the news definitely made
the distinction that these women were prostitutes, in fact they didn't
talk about them like they were women much at all, which made me feel really
bad for the women. Myself and many, many other young women that I knew
at the time were very, very scared of the Green River Killer. It was very
much a part of our psyche, and it still is, when you grow up with that
kind of stuff. Washington had a lot of serial killers---a lot. The whole
time I was growing up, there was Ted Bundy, or the guy in Spokane. And
when I was in Vancouver, they finally caught the guy---all these prostitutes
were disappearing from downtown, and nobody gave a shit about it. Actually,
the people of Vancouver gave a shit about it, but the local government
didn't, because a lot of them were prostitutes, some of them were drug
addicts, so they figured they were lost anyway. I actually think there's
a civil suit in Vancouver---you might want to check on the facts on that---because
they could have figured out who this guy was a long time ago, and they
didn't bother to do it. The government would make up these wild claims---"Well,
we might think it might be a white slavery ring," blamed it on Asian gangs---it
was really gross. Same thing with the Green River Killer: they knew who
he was for a long time, but they couldn't bring him in on technicalities.
I'm sure that it upset the people who had been looking for him that long
just as much as the parents of the people he had killed. These women's
lives just never seemed that important; they weren't really made that important
on the news. It was all about fear. I guess the song is basically me just
thinking, "What are their lives? What would their families do."

PSF: I know you started playing punk rock as a drummer,
correct? I'm wondering if there might be some sort of link between that
fear you described and the number of female punk musicians in the Pacific
Northwest, if that kind of rage had anything to do with it. It's completely
tangential....

CASE: I don't know if it's so much about that. I
think it was more of a reaction to the fact that punk rock in the Northwest
at the time was pretty macho and politically dogmatic---it seemed like
a big boys' club. Plus, I think that people try to take a super-feminist
standpoint on this stuff. I just think a lot of women wanted to play music
because they were inspired, because it was an incredibly good time for
music in the Northwest. There was a lot of clubs, a lot of bands, a lot
of people coming through, a lot of all-ages stuff---it was a very exciting
time to live there. I'm sure that some of it could be related to that,
though---there are millions of reasons why people do things. People that
we knew and loved were raped and murdered, and it was a big deal.

There's also things related to the way women are
in the Northwest; I'm sure it has something to do with why they have the
best health care for women in the country, the best sex education, the
best Planned Parenthoods. And I totally took it for granted until I had
to go to Planned Parenthood in New York once while I was on tour a couple
years ago. I got treated like an animal. It was fucking awful---I've never
felt so humiliated. Everything is run by state. I think everything here
in New York is very shame-based. I hope that isn't true. The sex education
I saw around the office was very much men and women not in the same responsibility
category.

PSF: I want to talk about the milieu you came up
in as a musician. You always sang, I have to assume.

CASE: In the house, when nobody was around. But I
didn't start singing in front of anybody until I was 25 or 26. I'm 31.
I started playing drums in punk bands as early as 17; I was shy, and drums
are a good thing to hide behind. And it's really fun to play drums. I went
to so many shows, and finally somebody suggested starting a band, and I
was right there. There's a point where you just have to say, "If these
other people are willing to look stupid, I'm willing to look stupid." And
also getting older and having more confidence. I didn't really come from
a place with a lot of confidence.

PSF: Were you still in high school or had you moved
onto college?

CASE: I dropped out of high school. I went to junior
college a bit when I was 19, but I wasn't ready and dropped out. I went
back to college in Canada when I was 24 and got my BFA. If you're self-motivated
enough to know what you want to do and how to do it, you don't have to
go. That's why I haven't gone back for my MFA: my four years at school
taught me how to research things and how to learn things for myself.

PSF: Do you have any ongoing research projects you're
currently doing for yourself?

CASE: I do photography---I don't have as much time
as I'd like to for that. I just spend time being really interested in things;
it's going to culminate in some kind of project at some point, I'm sure.
I don't know exactly where it's going, but I'm not worried about it, either.

PSF: Would it be music-based, or more generally culture-
or arts-based?

CASE: Probably a mix of arts and music based.

PSF: Is there going to be another New Pornographers
album?

CASE: We're finishing up recording at the end of
August. It's slated to come out in February. It's a little different---you
can't make the same record all the time, but I think the elements that
I enjoyed are the same. Dan is still writing and recording with us even
though he isn't going to tour with us, which makes me very happy, because
I love my Dan Bejar, and Carl [Newman]'s written a lot of great songs.
We've been playing together as a band more. We were kind of a collective
of people who made a record before, but this time we're a band who've toured
together---we're more of a streamlined unit than we were. Hopefully the
spontaneity will be good spontaneity.

PSF: And is there going to be another Corn Sisters
album?

CASE: Eventually. We're not planning it right now.
Carolyn [Mark] is putting out a record; she's going to be incredibly busy
with that. I'm putting out a record and I'm going to be busy with that.
We do shows together when we can, and when we both get a lull, we're going
to go back and do more stuff. We'll probably be in the Corn Sisters as
long as we live. It's kind of our good-time vacation band. Plus, it's a
really good excuse to spend time with my friend Carolyn, who's my one of
my favorite people ever.

Michaelangelo Matos writes for Spin, Village
Voice, Time Out New York, Stereo-Type, City Pages,
Chicago Reader, Baltimore City Paper, Memphis Flyer,
Cleveland Scene, Creative Loafing Atlanta, and maintains
two weblogs, You Can't Wear Nail Polish
to a Surgery and The Mix Project.
He lives in Manhattan.